Evan Y. Jones was born and raised in Cedar City, Utah. He graduated from Utah State University with a degree in civil engineering and from Colorado State University with an MBA. He is a licensed professional engineer and has spent his entire career in mining, working as an engineer, chief engineer, mine superintendent, mine manager, project manager and vice president. His career began in 1967 working at the iron mines west of Cedar City, Utah, for Utah International Inc. In 1973, he and his family moved to Farmington, New Mexico, where he worked at the Navajo, San Juan, and LaPlata coal mines, also operated by Utah International. Evan and his family lived for a time in Australia while he managed an international mining project. He also worked four years for the ARCO Coal Company at the Los Angeles and Denver offices and at the Black Thunder and Coal Creek coal mines in Gillette, Wyoming.

At the time when Evan was working at the Cedar City operation, there were active mining operations at Iron Springs, Comstock, Desert Mound, Iron Mountain, and Three Peaks. As part of his work in the engineering department, he worked at four of these five locations. Utah International, over time, became BHP (Broken Hill Proprietary), which is the world’s largest resource company.